Wyclef Jean has responded further to allegations that his Yele Haiti Foundation mismanaged donations, admitting the aid organisation "made mistakes". At a press conference in New York, the Haitian-born musician acknowledged administrative errors but insisted that he has never personally benefited from the foundation's work.

Yele Haiti has become one of the most prominent aid groups in the aftermath of the 12 January earthquake that killed as many as 200,000 people in and around Port-au-Prince. Collecting more than $2m (£1.23m) through SMS fundraising, the organisation – founded by Jean – will also benefit from a major telethon on Friday. While they have not yet distributed any of these funds – saying they were overwhelmed by the volume of donations – Yele Haiti plans its first airlift for later this week.

Jean's foundation came under fire following a report by the Smoking Gun, showing that between 2005 and 2007, they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on services by companies owned by Yele's directors. Jean responded with a YouTube video claiming the foundation had been given "a clean bill of health by an external auditor".

"As a young NGO, have we made mistakes?" Jean asked in New York yesterday. "Yes. Did I ever use Yele money for personal benefits? Absolutely not." Showing his Haitian passport and US green card, the former Fugees member emphasised that he founded the charity with his own funds. "I wanted to make sure that Yele would not just be a foundation, but would actually be an NGO on the ground in Haiti because it's the only way I could be effective to the Haitian people."

Yele president Hugh Locke said that he regretted the group's early errors, such as delaying tax returns. He also addressed allegations that Jean collected a $100,000 performance fee for a 2006 benefit concert in Monaco. Although all of this money went to production costs and not into the musician's pockets, Locke conceded that Yele should have insisted event organisers cover these expenses. "On the books, it looks as though there was a benefit, but there was not." As with payments to companies linked with Yele, "it was not done with the intent to do anything other than be efficient".

While accountants scrutinised Yele Haiti's activities, Jean was in Haiti, arriving the day after the earthquake hit. "I'm not the one that was reporting the news," he said. "I'm the one that was carrying dead bodies on the street. I'm the one that carried little girls to the morgue. And [when] they said, 'The morgue don't have room in here' ... we carried bodies to the cemetery."

Jean called for "a massive exodus" from Port-au-Prince, proposing that survivors of the quake be brought to temporary camps outside of the capital. "I give you my word, if I tell them to go, they will go," he said. "But they need somewhere to go." By evacuating the city, workers would be able to accelerate clean-up and restoration projects. According to Locke, this plan is backed by Haitian president René Préval and prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive.

Jean also asked that the next phase of aid include security for reconstruction teams, as riots have begun to break out. "We do not have the solution, but we have the start to what I think the solution can be," he said. "We're going to be back on the ground on Saturday. And we're going to be back on the ground every week until we [overcome] the situation."